1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method of communicating between an end station and a service provider or the like. More specifically, this invention relates to a method of achieving efficiency in communications between an end station, such as a personal computer, and a service provider via the internet or other communications system.
2. Related Art
Advancements in the data communications industry have enabled personal computer users to communicate with the outside world from inside their homes. Personal computers communicate with service providers via modems, integrated services digital network (ISDN) ports, or other high speed ports. Persons in the data communications industry have even contemplated using asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technology to send high speed multimedia data, including video and audio data, to household personal computers. However, current ATM technology requires too much overhead for use with personal computers as will be more fully described below.
Communication methods fall into two general categories. The first form of communication, such as communication via modems and the like, dedicates an entire communications channel to only one task. This form of communication method cannot support multiple-type signal transmissions simultaneously because the frame transmitting the data does not carry source and destination address information in its header. The second form of communication, such as ATM communication systems and the like, includes sophisticated source and destination address information in the frame header and, thus, has the capability to send data simultaneously to many different destinations. This second form of communication, however, requires a somewhat large amount of channel capacity to carry the address and control information. In ATM communication systems, transmissions typically include a large, global header followed by a series of frames, each having its own header address for the data transmitted in the frame. The address and control information in the global header alone occupies approximately 10% of the channel capacity. Where unnecessary to achieve communication between network devices, carrying the address and control information results in inefficient communication and data transfer between network devices.
Millions of users communicate with services, such as a multimedia carrier or the internet, from their homes over their personal computers. For those users, the most efficient communication method would define a protocol specific to their home computer and the service provider, including address information and other information necessary to establish the communication. This would eliminate the burden of carrying useless address or control information over the communication channel which the user does not need for the particular task. The service provider could then translate each individual user's needs, and connect the user to a local service or assign the user a new address to enable connection to the next layer service.
The difficulties suggested in the preceding are not intended to be exhaustive-but rather are among many which tend to reduce the efficiency of prior methods of communication between personal computers and service providers. Other noteworthy problems may also exist; however, those presented above should be sufficient to demonstrate that such methods appearing in the past will admit to worthwhile improvement.